Our experience with Kathryn Pirdeux was absolutely unacceptable and, frankly, one of the worst…read moreexperiences we have had with any professional involved in our home project. I would strongly caution anyone considering hiring her to think very carefully before paying her any money.
The entire process dragged on endlessly. It took an unreasonable amount of time just to receive the landscape design, and throughout that process there was virtually no meaningful discussion with us about what we wanted, how the design was evolving, or whether it actually reflected our vision for the property. When the design was finally delivered, after all that time and expense, we found the overall quality to be substandard and nowhere close to what we expected from someone presenting herself as a professional landscape designer.
What was especially frustrating was the constant focus on billing. It felt as though every conversation, every minute, and every interaction meant another charge. We were paying and paying while seeing very little meaningful progress or value in return. In our experience, collecting fees seemed to be handled with far more urgency than actually delivering a thoughtful, high-quality landscape design.
Even worse, after taking our money, we were essentially left high and dry. There was no proper collaborative review of the final landscape plan with us and, to our knowledge, no submission of the landscape plans to the HOA. We were left wondering exactly what we had paid all this money for.
This is not remotely the level of professionalism we expected for a custom home project. A professional designer should listen to the client, communicate, collaborate, provide timely work, produce a design commensurate with the fees being charged, and follow the project through. Our experience with Kathryn was the opposite: excessive delays, poor communication, constant billing, a disappointing design, and ultimately no satisfactory completion of the work.
The most upsetting part is that we trusted her with an important and expensive part of our home and paid her expecting professional service. Instead, we were left with an enormous sense that we had spent a significant amount of money and received remarkably little in return.
I would absolutely not hire Kathryn Pirdeux again, and I cannot recommend her based on our experience. Anyone considering working with her should insist on a detailed written scope, specific deliverables, firm deadlines, a clear limit on billable time, responsibility for HOA submissions, and defined payment milestones before paying anything.
Our biggest regret is that we did not walk away sooner.
